MIT Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

MTL VLSI SEMINAR

Tuesday

October 4, 1994

3:30 Reception

4:00 Lecture

Room 34-101

50 Vassar Street

Thermal Ink Jet: Mixture of Smart-Power Silicon Microelectronics and Classical Fluid Dynamics

Sophie Verdonckt-Vandebroek

Xerox J. C. Wilson Center for Research & Technology

Webster, New York

Thermal ink jet (TIJ) has emerged as the electronic technology of choice for desktop printing. The technology is a surprising blend of high-power silicon-based microelectronics; and classical physical mechanisms such as thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, and paper-ink interactions. This presentation will discuss the principles of TIJ printing, focusing on the design and fabrication of the heater-wafer circuitry and the channel-wafer ink nozzles and reservoirs. The thermal power required to eject an ink drop is generated in on-chip polysilicon heater elements connected to high-power MOSFET switches which are individual addressed through on-chip low-voltage control electronics. The integration of more than one hundred ink nozzles in a single device requires multiple process, device, and circuit design trade-offs.